What good is developing and qualifying leads if you're doing it the wrong way? After all, how many times has your marketing organization delivered prospects to the sales team only to have those prospects pushed back because they aren't mature enough? A recently announced partnership between Astadia, LeadJen, and Jesubi aims to bridge the gap between digital marketers and sales teams.

Astadia, a technology-enabled cloud consulting service, will team with LeadJen, a B2B lead generation company, and Jesubi, a marketing solutions software provider, to provide a total sales funnel management network that will "bridge the gap between marketing automation and CRM solutions, generating better qualified leads," according to a joint press release.

"We're really excited about the partnership on several fronts," says Jenny Vance, president of LeadJen. "There's a gap between some of the digital marketing efforts that are taking place and the transition of digital marketing leads that are being passed to sales. They're not really transitioning in an effective way for several reasons."

LeadJen's outsourced lead generation will enable Astadia and Jesubi to manage the knowledge gained from the "human dialogues that are coming from the human market and using those to drive better strategies," says Vance.

Astadia and LeadJen stand to benefit from Jesubi's Web-based process and point-and-click system, which both companies claim will help manage interactions at a faster pace than their competitors, while at the same time integrating with other CRM systems.

LeadJen and Jesubi will take Astadia, a customer of both solutions, and leverage its end-to-end marketing consulting solution. The companies will also bring together the customer lifecycle management solutions delivered via Astadia Cloud technologies.

"At Astadia we've worked with more than 300 customers on marketing automation," says Pablo Zurzolo, vice president of product marketing at Astadia. "The first thing we make sure of is that the data resources companies are using are sound and allows them to segment and target customers correctly and that their scoring program really reflects their targets."

According to Chris Houpis, senior research analyst specializing in marketing effectiveness at research firm Aberdeen Group, many companies are ineffective from the point of creation through execution to the point of close. Houpis calls this inability to move leads through the funnel "leakage," and says because there is so much leakage companies need to concentrate on bridging this gap. They must look at at enabling solutions like the ones provided by Astadia, LeadJen, and Jesubi, he adds.

"Total funnel management is saying to companies that they need to look at their capabilities," Houpis says, "whether they be knowledge management, process management, or organizational structure, and then leverage that with technology solutions, because that whole funnel has a lot of leakage. If you tighten that up you get significantly better results throughout the entire process and hit your bottom line more effectively."

Can this partnership be the plug for companies hoping to stop the leakage? "You have to wait and see how they're going to implement," Houpis says. "Does it have the potential to add value? Absolutely. We've seen such poor practices that anybody able to concentrate on and deliver true value in these areas should be able to contribute."